


Everywhere I Look Someone Dies (when will it be my turn)

by Netgirl_y2k



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Daenerys Lives, F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 13:00:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18993148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/pseuds/Netgirl_y2k
Summary: "Why did we never do this before?""Jon Snow's cock.""You didn't come to Winterfell.""You and your dragons didn't come for the Iron Fleet."Or,Dany survives; Drogon drops her off on the Iron Islands.





	Everywhere I Look Someone Dies (when will it be my turn)

Dany reached out for the Iron Throne, finally close enough to touch. She breathed in; air cold as Valyrian steel struck her lungs.

"...Jon?"

"Sorry to disappoint," came a droll female voice. Dany struggled to open eyes that did not want to open, tried to sit up and failed, and eventually succeeded in turning her head to see Yara Greyjoy sprawled artlessly on a chair by the bed where Dany lay helpless. 

"Where--?" She tried to sit up again, but the blankets pinning her to the bed felt as heavy as stone. "Where am I?"

"The Iron Islands. Pyke. My castle." 

"How?"

"It was the strangest thing. I was woken in the night by a sound like a dying kraken; I go to investigate and there's a full-grown dragon on my battlements with a dead queen." Yara tipped her head towards Dany. "A mostly dead queen." 

"Drogon. Where is--?" Dany's question dissolved into pained coughs.

"Easy there," said Yara, standing and easing Dany up onto the pillows. She pressed a goblet of water to Dany's parched and cracked lips. Dany swallowed, tried to swallow more and choked, spilling water down her chin and on to the blankets. Yara unsentimentally cleaned her up. 

"He's gone." Yara answered Dany's question. "Last seen flying east."

"He wouldn't."

"He did. Feel free to tell yourself he did it to protect you; I'm not sure that I would have been able to keep your presence here hidden if Drogon were hovering over Lordsport."

*

Dany's continued survival was indeed a well-guarded secret.

Yara had told her that the men who had been with her when she discovered Dany's broken body have since been sent on long sea voyages, and that what healers there were on Pyke were good for little more than pouring strong drink down their patients' throats and amputating limbs, often not even in that order.

No servants were allowed to enter the bedchamber, and it was Yara alone who brought Dany water and what little food she was able to keep down, Yara who washed her and changed her soiled bedclothes.

She wondered who Yara had previously nursed: her mother, or perhaps her brother? Because this tender care was not what Dany would have expected from the Ironborn leader. 

Then again she had known Yara Greyjoy for only a little time, and had bothered to find out very little about her beyond the numbers of men and ships she had at her command and what ambitions she harbored in exchange for her fealty. 

It galled, to know that even so Yara was the closest thing to a loyal friend and ally she had on this side of the Narrow Sea.

"Is this not beneath the Queen of the Iron Islands?" she asked as Yara stripped her out of a sweat-soaked nightgown. 

Dany thought that she had known what it was to feel small and helpless, but the inability to lift her own arms up unaided was newly humbling.

"It would be," said Yara, "if there were any such person; fortunately for you, Lady Greyjoy does not mind."

Naked, Dany could not help but look down at the angry red scar bisecting her breast.

Yara followed Dany's gaze, tracing the pad of her thumb across the length of the scar. "You are a difficult woman to kill."

"Did the dagger miss--?" A small voice, one that belonged to the young and naïve  
girl that Dany had thought she left behind on the Great Grass Sea, wondered if Jon Snow might not have missed on purpose, for the sake of love.

"No," said Yara with the easy confidence of a woman who had slain enough men to know what a killing blow looked like. "It struck true. Anyone else would have died."

 _I am Daenerys Stormborn,_ thought Dany, _Mother of Dragons, and I am not so easily killed._

But at the same time a seed of doubt - doubt that Dany thought she had long since left behind - whispered that if Drogon had left her bleeding in the throne room she would be dead, if she had been found alive and handed over to the Stark sisters she would be dead, if Yara Greyjoy had decided she wanted no part of this and left her outside to be scoured by the brutal Iron Islands winds she would be dead. 

*

Yara found Dany collapsed on the cold stone floor; she had thought that she was strong enough to at least walk around the room, but her treacherous legs had given out beneath her.

Yara hauled Dany unceremoniously up. She slung Dany's arm across her shoulders, and walked her back to the bed.

As Yara eased her down onto the edge of the mattress, Dany's thoughts returned to the Iron Throne, the pursuit of which had defined almost her entire life, and which she had never gotten to sit upon.

"I suppose they've already crowned my nephew," she said. It was easier now to think of Jon Snow in those terms. 

"It's funny you should mention that," said Yara, and produced a strip of parchment, the ink partially obscured by raven shit. "I've been summoned to King's Landing. The Unsullied want Jon Snow's head. The Starks want a crown on his head. They've called a Great Council to decide his fate."

"And what would they do to queenslayers on the Iron Islands?"

"We would stake them out on the beach at low tide and let them spend their last hours anticipating just how much drowning is going to hurt."

Dany lay back against the pillows, the exhaustion that was never far from her these days settling back into her bones. "I prefer fire."

The last thing she heard was Yara's laconic drawl of: "So I hear."

* 

Dany's silver-white hair had never so much as singed when she walked through fires that should have reduced all her parts to ash, so she had half expected it to refuse to yield to Yara's blade.

Instead her identifiably Targaryen hair fell about her in lifeless hanks as Yara cut as close to Dany's scalp as she was able. 

It was more than a week's sailing to King's Landing and the same to return, had gone Yara's argument, plus however long the Great Council took. Dany would need help from the servants in her absence, and while there were those that Yara trusted more than others it would be better if they didn't know who Dany truly was, and her silver hair made her almost as identifiable as her dragon.

Yara gathered up Dany's hair and hurled it out the window. At least the screeching, shitting seabirds of Pyke would have beautiful nests this year, Dany thought bitterly. 

Yara crossed back and ran her hand across Dany's head, where only a colourless fuzz remained. It stung where Yara's fingers brushed against the bloody nicks she had accidentally cut into Dany's scalp. Dany hissed, and leaned into the touch.

"Remember," said Yara, "I've told the servants that you're mute, so say nothing."

"Who do they think I am?"

Yara shrugged carelessly. "A woman I've been keeping."

"If they think I'm your whore - " Dany swallowed the twice over indignity of being believed a whore, and having no choice but to accept it " - what have they made of you always coming in here with bandages and milk of the poppy?"

"Most of them worked for Euron before I retook these islands, they are not so easily shocked."

Yara leaned down and pressed her lips to the fuzz of Dany's scalp, she hesitated and pressed them again to her temple and then the corner of her eye, then very quickly pressed a kiss to her mouth.

She retreated several steps, sketched an over the top bow and said, "I shall return as soon as I may, my queen."

*

Dany was much stronger by the time Yara returned, not least because of the cruel ministrations of a wind carved Ironborn woman who had apparently once served as nursemaid to Yara and her brother. The Greyjoy children had left her with not a shred of tenderness or maternal feeling, but with a surplus of the sort of unfeeling efficiency it took to force Dany to eat and stretch her protesting muscles.

Yara appeared, laughing. She stripped out of the waxed coat she wore over her armor, threw it carelessly over a chair, and sprawled on the other side of Dany's bed.

"Is something amusing you?" Dany asked.

"Oh, many things." Yara regarded Dany. "You look better."

"Is Jon Snow king?" Dany asked. 

"No." Yara laughed her sailor's laugh, and it took her a moment to calm herself enough to continue, "Bran Stark is. Bran the Broken, they're calling him. For some reason."

"What happened to my nephew? Has Grey Worm executed him?" 

"No," said Yara, "he's been exiled to the far north, beyond the wall."

Dany had fully expected Jon to have been crowned King Aegon Targaryen, and had been working up a fiery fury about it. Not even the news that they had given Jon what he always would have chosen and called it a punishment could satisfy her anger. 

Bran made an unsatisfactory target for her rage; she could not share Yara's mirth, but even in her imagination Dany could not fathom Jon Snow's crippled brother reacting to fire and blood in any sort of satisfying way.

"Tyrion has been named hand of the king."

Ah. There was someone Dany could get well and truly angry at. That _traitor_. That ungrateful dwarf. She should have had Drogon roast him where he stood--

"Hey - " Yara took Dany's hand in her own and lifted it to her lips " - stay with me. Who cares about the imp? Let him and his terrible plans be a blight on Bran's reign."

"Yes." Dany tugged Yara close, her kraken armor digging painfully into Dany's flesh, but she would not be wearing it for so very long. She moved Yara's hand to her unscarred breast. "Make me forget all of them."

*

"Why did we never do this before?" Dany asked afterwards, lying bed with Yara's arm around her.

"Jon Snow's cock," Yara answered. 

"You didn't come to Winterfell."

"You and your dragons didn't come for the Iron Fleet."

"I should have come after you." If Dany had fired Euron's ships when he first took Yara and Ellaria Sand then Rhaegal would still be alive.

"I should have come to Winterfell." Yara looked away from Dany, though she continued to trace distracted patterns on her skin. "I should have fought beside my brother; I should have died with him if I had to."

"I am glad you did not."

"I could say the same about you."

*

"I should raze Winterfell to the fucking ground!"

Yara had neglected to mention that while Jon Snow hadn't gained a crown, his scheming, too clever for her own good sister had.

Yara rolled her eyes. "With what dragon? With what army?" 

"You command the Iron Fleet."

Yara scoffed. "I'm not going to sail against the North."

"You call me your queen, yet you wouldn't sail at my command?"

"I've seen what happens to Greyjoys who try to take Winterfell from the Starks. And anyway, my brother's bones lie in Winterfell with a stone direwolf to guard his rest."

"I see." However loyal Yara was, and even Dany could see that she was loyal beyond reason, she was more loyal to her brother's memory. "And why didn't you seize independence for the Iron Islands. If Sansa Stark gets a crown, why not you?"

Yara looked incredulously at Dany. "For you, you idiot. I was trying to avoid drawing our new king's eye here."

"Oh." Dany handed Yara back the letter inviting her to the queen in the north's coronation. "Will you go?"

Yara tilted her head thoughtfully. "I think not. I suspect she means to offer me an alliance, for Theon's sake, and, well - " the corner of her mouth quirked up " - I already have a queen."

*

The fresh air was good for her, but the bitter winds up on the battlements felt like they were bruising her lungs anew. Dany tucked herself against Yara, partly as a shield from the wind. Her hair was growing back in, darker than before, blonde rather than silver, and she knew she looked the part that she was meant to be playing, that of Yara's woman. 

It chafed less that it once had.

She looked out at the bay, filled with ships. "Are you sailing for Dorne?"

Yara had shown Dany her correspondence with the new prince of Dorne, each of them hoping that the other would be the first to declare independence from King's Landing.

Dany hoped that they would move soon; the idea of Bran and Tyrion ruling over an ever-diminishing number of kingdoms was pleasing to her. 

"We're sailing for the Reach," said Yara. "Rich land, the Reach."

"You swore no more raiding."

"I did." Dany felt more than saw Yara's shrug. "But then the queen I made that promise to burned a city to ash, so I don't feel especially obligated to hold to it."

Dany pulled away. "I had no choice!"

Yara looked supremely unconvinced, but said, "I don't care about what you did. I am Ironborn and not squeamish, and now I know you aren't either. If it helps know that the new lord of the Reach is the mother of all cunts - think of it as the Ironborn _liberating_ his people from him.

Dany snorted, looking away out to sea, but let Yara pull her close again.

*

The raid on the Reach went well. 

Dany sat by Yara's side as she feasted her people with the spoils. Her men toasted her, sloshing fine wine everywhere. Dany realised that it didn't matter whether Yara wore a crown or not, she was a queen here in all but name.

Yara raised a toast to the absentee lord of Highgarden, and then to the Dothraki who had made their new home in the mountains between the Reach and Dorne and whose constant harrying made it all the more likely that the lords of the Reach would acquiesce when she sued for land. 

The Ironborn looked at Yara the same way that the Northmen had looked at Jon Snow; but instead of the gnawing jealousy that had consumed her at Winterfell Dany felt... nothing. 

These people never would have loved her, she realised. Let them love Yara Greyjoy. Let the people love Bran Stark, even if their new king was incapable of loving them in return. Gods, let them even love Sansa Stark if they must.

When Yara raised a toast to the dragon queen to a drunken, if confused roar of approval Dany realised that she was deep in her cups. She caught Yara's sleeve and said, "You should go to bed."

"Yes," agreed Yara, grinning, "we should go to bed!"

*

"When will you leave?" Yara asked. 

"Am I going somewhere?" Dany replied playfully.

"Eventually," said Yara. "You are Daenerys Stormborm. You did not cheat death only to live out your days on Pyke as my salt wife."

That gave Dany pause. Yara had stumbled on the way to their bedchamber, she had been graceless in removing her clothes, and her lovemaking had been...enthusiastic if clumsy, but now she sounded entirely sober.

"Where would you go," Dany asked, "if you were me?"

"East, where your dragon went; I would gift you a ship for the journey. To Slavers Bay, to rule over your fiefdom there; I would take you there myself."

Dany wriggled closer to Yara under the covers. "Would you stay with me in Meereen?"

Yara tipped her head forward and pressed a kiss to the scar over Dany's breast. "No, I don't think so."

Dany understood. Yara belonged in Westeros. She had _plans_ here: with the Reach, with Dorne, maybe even with the queen in the north when she no longer had Dany's disapproval to contend with.

"It is a very long journey East," said Dany, moving until she could rest her head against Yara's breast, "perhaps I should rest here for a little while longer."

"Yes," Yara agreed, holding Dany close, "for a little while longer."


End file.
